Letters from Tonraq
by xXGeeknProudXx
Summary: Sooyoung finds hundreds of letters addressed to her late father.


4836 Yangchen Street.

This particular address looked so familiar. She said it out loud to herself, and it even _sounded_ familiar.

Sooyoung read the address on the paper over and over again. Her boss had told her to go to this address and give the owner an envelope. What was in the envelope was most likely money. He was supposed to mail it, but he knew that the postal company illegally intercepts messages. He would deliver himself, but it's too far of a distance to travel in a wheelchair.

"4836 Yangchen Street," Soo said to herself one more time before she grabbed her coat and hat and headed out of the door.

It was a chilly day today, but the sun was still shining, and the city was still busy. She turned left on Avatar Avenue. This was the most popular and congested street in the city, for it connected the docs and ferries on Aang Street all the way to the train station on Jafar Street.

She walked past three blocks of stores and restaurants until she turns right on Yangchen. This seemed to have been a long walk as the numbers on the stores went up. Finally, she reaches her destination.

She opened the door to be met by stairs going down to what looked like an underground bar. The air was filled with the smell of cactus juice, and jazz. She walked up to the stage where a band was playing. There was a man playing a trumpinet, but he wasn't nearly as good as her father was. This man's sound was brassy, and he kept cracking his high notes.

Shaking her head, she walked to a counter and asked the bartender where the owner of the store was.

"What do you want with him?" the young lady said as she was drying out a glass.

"It's from Jang," she simply said.

The lady's eyes widened at the sound of her boss's name, "How do you know him? What's your business?"

"Calm down dear," a man came up from behind a door, "She's fine. Just making a delivery." He turned to Soo. "Come. Follow me."

Without a word, Soo followed the man. He must have been the owner of the bar. They went down to the end of a hallway where there was another room. Soo, hesitant at first, but she went in anyway, and sat in the chair in front of a desk.

The owner sat down across from her and said, "You have somethin' for me?"

Soo nodded and slid the envelope onto the desk. The man took his time to open it with a letter opener, and squinted his green eyes at the small print.

Uninterested and growing a bit impatient, she looked around the small room. In the corner of the room was a large wooden closet that was slightly water damaged at the bottom. The desk was made of rock, and a picture of the owner and the bartender sat on top.

"_They must be married," _she thought to herself, remembering how he called the lady "dear". On the other side of the desk was an unopened letter. Soo peered to look at the addressee.

"Do you know those names?" the man startled her out of her concentration. He seemed to be watching her for a while.

"Wha?" she said, trying to pretend that she didn't know what he was talking about.

"The names on that letter. It's not addressed to me. It's to this Shumak guy, and from a man named Tonraq. Do you know either of them?"

"Um…" she hesitated. She knew exactly who Shumak was from, and she has heard of Tonraq a few times. "Is…Tonraq from the Southern Water Tribe?"

"That's what it says here." He leaned forward. "I've been trying to find this Shumak guy for a few years. These letters have been coming every week since I bought this club. Do you know him?"

"He-He's my…father."

"Great! Can you give him these?" He stood up and walked to the closet in the corner. In it were letters-hundreds of them, and they all seemed to be addressed to her father.

"I can't." Soo said timidly. "He's dead. Why have _you_ been getting them?"

"I have a feeling that he was the previous owner of this place."

That's when it suddenly hit her. The address, the office, the closet. The desk that her mother earthbended out of the ground herself. Everything seemed so familiar because it was.

"4836 Yangchen Street…" Soo mumbled. "This is my father's club."

"It was. This place was sold to me by the local gang. I have to pay them every month or-"

"They'll kill you." Soo said bitterly. Memories of her mother crying, and her father being buried, and how her mother grew into an even deeper depression afterwards suddenly flooded her mind.

"I'm so sorry."

"Don't be. It's not your fault." She blinked away the tears that burned her eyes.

"Do you still want these letters? I can throw them out if you want. Technically, you have every right to read them, since you are now their owner."

She thought about it. She was angry at how this man kept them all these years. She just wanted him to get rid of them. But who was Tonraq? She has only heard the name in papers-the father of the Avatar. What does Tonraq have to do with her father?

"I'll take them," she finally said.

"Okay then." He ducked down and pulled out a large bag. He began to neatly put the letters in the bag, including this new one. He topped the piles with a picture that was hidden in the back of the closet, then he closed the bag and plopped it at Soo's feet.

"Before you go, give this to Jang," he slid another letter across the desk. Soo picked it up and respectfully bowed to the man before standing and slinging the bag over her shoulder.

"Thank you," she said as she headed towards the door.

"If I get any more of those letters, I'll be sure you get them."

"Okay," she left the left the office and headed down the hallway. She quickly went back into the dining area with the poor musicians. With a nod to the owner's wife, she exited her father's jazz club.


End file.
